If it were of any use, every day the gardener would fall on [her] knees and pray somehow like this: "O [Lady], grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o'clock in the morning, but you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in, grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, helianthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought-loving plants -- I will write their names on a bit of paper if you like -- and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not, for instance, on spirea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven. [So mote it be.]" For so it was in the garden of Eden, otherwise things would not have grown in it so well as they did, how could they?
~From The Gardener's Year by Karel Capek, reprinted in Gardens, An Essay on the Human Condition by Robert Pogue Harrison.
~Picture found here.
4 comments:
Ooooo! And no blackspot, and please make my area properly zone 7 so I can overwinter passionflower vines; and let the deer wander about looking picturesque but let them only eat the weeds. Oh, and none of those nasty bright red lily bugs and their horrific larvae either, if You could, thanks.
Your photo a couple posts down of the garden porn got me all hot and bothered myself and I've spent the last couple nights dreaming about the back garden and all the things I want to do come spring. One of which being that I think this year I simply must build a labyrinth.
Precision agriculture!
Horti-therapy!
And a nice little freeze, please, just in one corner, so that lilac and peony will bloom there? One of the few things I miss in California is the armfuls of lilacs and those huge double white peonies with the red flecks that thrive so easily in New York.
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